Island in the Sea of Time

by S. M. Stirling

  Behind him Walker spoke to one of the Tartessians: “You learn?”

  “I learn a great deal, lord! Already we can do many of the simpler tasks. In some ways this iron is easier to work than bronze. A great pity it’s so difficult to cast, but it works well beneath the hammer. The blast furnace”-he used the English phrase-“goes well too, soon it will be ready, and we learn how to find the ores of iron. There is much of it back home, I think.”

  The hoof hissed as the hot iron touched it, and the glowing shoe gave a shuffffff as it was quenched in a bucket of water after he’d tapped the final adjustment; he drove the nails home that held it in place, and crimped them. Both the Iraiina apprentices could already do that much, but it didn’t hurt to show them again. He hated the thought of anyone messing this up and hurting a horse’s feet.

  “Be seeing you, John,” Walker said, swinging into the saddle. “Promised Daurthunnicar I’d bring Bastard over to cover some of his mares.” He slapped his mount’s neck. “Now that the locals’ve seen what he can do, he’s in stallion heaven.”

  “Aren’t we all, boss?” laughed one of the three riding escort; it was Rodriguez, the ex-Coast Guardsman.

  The four horses clattered across the cobbles and then their passage turned to the softer thudding of hooves on dirt.

  Martins stared sullenly after them. It was bad enough when Walker was around, but much as he hated to admit it, it was worse when the renegade was gone. Some of the things that Hong woman did��� his eyes slid away from the big two-story log house across the courtyard. Of course, he’d thought about running.

  Shit, I think about it all the time, man. This is, like, totally Mordor here. That dude’s head is in a truly fucked-up place.

  But he’d seen others who ran brought back with hounds, flogged��� and once, crucified. He might make it, especially if he could steal a horse, but Barbs certainly couldn’t. She wasn’t the outdoor type, and their natural-method contraceptives had failed, badly. At least Walker didn’t have him in an iron collar or chained up at night. Not yet. Plus there wasn’t anywhere to run when you thought about it. From what he’d seen most of the locals were every bit as ferocious as Walker, just less systematic. He’d heard the Earth Folk were more mellow, sort of laid-back, but they lived a long way away to the west.

  Barbara came out of his own smaller cabin and banged a spoon against the bottom of a frying pan. “Time to break for lunch,” Martins said gratefully. “C’mon, you guys.”

  “Well, I’ll admit that you’re a pretty good pool player, but nobody could make that shot,” Cofflin grumbled. “Besides, don’t you have to go baste that turkey again or something?”

  The basement recreation room of Guard House was dominated by the billiard table; the other end of the room held only a set of well-used weights and some Nautilus machines, both brought in since the Event. The oil lantern over their heads provided more than enough light, and it was no more than medium chilly, something everyone had gotten used to since the beginning of their first winter without central heating.

  Marian Alston grinned like a shark as she chalked her cue and pulled back the sleeves of her sweater. Got him, she thought. Not a bad player, but you needed killer instinct for pool. Good to have someone to shoot with, though. You could really relax over this game, and it bored Swindapa like an auger.

  Although there are some drawbacks to hanging out with straights. Wouldn’t understand the turkey-baster jokes, for instance.

  “Know, Oh Cofflin, that my state of karmic spiritual enlightenment puts me beyond all need for your praise. Yet not beyond need for your beer. Extra bottle on this shot? Thirty-seven up and with anothah three I win.”

  “Well��� all right.”

  Smack. The white caromed off a cushion, kissed one ball, then tickled the twelve. It spun on the edge of the pocket, wavered, and settled again.

  “Damn! If you hadn’t reminded me about the turkey, I’d have done it,” she swore.

  The smell from upstairs was getting better and better, mingling with the lingering aroma of the baking she’d done earlier in the day.

  “All right, then, I’ll split that beer with you.” He ambled over to the cooler and took out a bottle, part of the Cofflins’ contribution to the Christmas quasi-potluck dinner. “One good thing about this weather is you can get the beer really cold.”

  “Amen.” She looked at her watch. “I will have to go look at that turkey-”

  “Marian.” Martha’s voice. “You’d better come up, I think.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  She laid the cue down and took the stairs at a bounding run. The other early arrivals-Martha and the Arnsteins, Sandy Rapczewicz and Doc Coleman-had been sitting in the kitchen, for the warmth and to nibble. Swindapa was standing by the black-iron stove, long spoon still clutched in one hand, tears streaking down her face in slow trickles.

  “Hey, honeypie, it’s all right, I’m here,” Alston said softly, reaching for her. ” ‘Sail right, sweetheart. There, there, Marian’s here, sugar.”

  Swindapa dropped the spoon and gripped her convulsively. Alston made a waving gesture toward the stove with her free arm and led the Fiernan out into the vacant sunroom. They sat on one of the sofas, and the tears became racking sobs. Outside snow fell in huge soft flakes, batting at the windows like slithery cold kitten-paws.

  “I miss my mother! I want my family!” The words trailed off into unpronounceable Fiernan consonants, gasped out into the hollow of her shoulder between sputtering heaves of grief.

  And this time of year is a big family feast over there, too, Alston thought, making a low humming in her throat and rocking the other, stroking her back through the check shirt. Fiernan don’t leave home, at least not the women, From what Swindapa had said, a girl usually just moved elsewhere in the greathouse and built a hearth of her own when she started having babies, staying in the same huge extended family all her life. The other’s misery wrung at her; she buried her face in the silky hair and crooned.

  After a while the tight grip around her chest relaxed and the sobs faded into sniffles. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, wiping her companion’s face and smiling wryly as she remembered the screaming Valkyrie figure who’d stood over her on the shore of the Coatzacoalcos. After another while of silence, Swindapa sighed and blew her nose.

  “I feel better now,” she said, smiling, cuddling with a mercurial change of mood.

  Didn’t apologize for crying, either, or say thanks, Alston noted. An American would have. At least she’d learned to use a handkerchief instead of her fingers. Well, the fact that you love someone doesn’t make them more like you.

  Her mouth quirked. She’d always-well, ever since Jolene left-had dreams about the ideal Significant Other. Someone black, of course. About her own age, and with similar interests, just enough difference to be interesting��� And here I’m settled down with a blond bukra teenager from 1250 B.C. who prays to the Woman in the Moon, she thought. Well, you had to work at any relationship worth having.

  “Glad you do feel better, ‘dapa,” she said tenderly.

  They went back into the kitchen. Sandy Rapczewicz had the oven door open and was standing over the turkey with baster in one hand and spoon in the other, looking irresolute. “I have the deck there, Ms. Rapczewicz,” Alston said. “It’s nearly ready, anyway.”

  “Thanks, Skipper,” the XO muttered. She was still a little tender about the face, but the bones were knitting well, the rather lumpy Slavic countenance unaltered.

  “The secret to a really good turkey,” Alston went on easily, “is keeping the flesh moist-‘specially with these lean wild ones.”

  The bird weighed about twenty pounds, the upper limit with the woods-caught types from the mainland the island was rearing now. She prodded a fork into the joint between drumstick and body. The juice ran clear. “Right, let’s take it out and let it stand for a little while. Now everyone but volunteers out of the kitchen-this is the tricky part.”

&
nbsp; Getting everything to the table at the same time and neither overcooked nor cold was difficult.

  “I feel as if I were mutilating my eldest son,” Miskelefol said dolefully. “And this climate! It’s bad enough in summertime. In winter the damp would rot the testicles off a Sardinian.”

  “You’ve seen what the Yare-the Eager-can do,” Isketerol said cheerfully. A Tartessian crew was training on her, under the supervision of Walker’s men. “Think what this will be capable of. And it keeps the men busy over winter.”

  Both men peered out the door of the hut. They had broken up the hulls of the Wave Treader and the Foam Hunter for their wood, and put up improvised stocks to hold the frame of another ship. One about two-thirds the Yare’s size, considerably shorter but broader in the beam. Back home on the Middle Sea, a ship’s hull went up first, with the boards fitted to each other tongue-and-groove, and the frame put in later as strengthening. The Eagle People method was to build the frame first, cut the planks straight, and then nail them on, twisting them as necessary. It was just as strong, and much easier��� once you were used to it. The sailors practically had to be driven to it, full of mutterings about bad luck. Not to mention doubts that caulking would hold out the water, even when they’d seen with their own eyes.

  The other cause of delay had been the need for iron smithwork. Isketerol looked out from the edge of his hut and smiled as the distinctive clang��� clang came from another hut closer to the beach. Now he had two men of his own skilled in the ironsmith’s art, at least the beginnings of it, and they were teaching others. And they’d helped with every stage of setting up the blast furnace, learning that mystery as well.

  “When the Sea Wolf is finished, we’ll load her with a cargo of sixty tons of iron, cousin,” he said. He slapped the younger man on the back. “Then we’ll sail her and Yare into Tartessos town and be richer than the king. You saw what tools and armor made of iron can do.”

  Turn a bronze spearpoint as if it were made of lead, for starters. Everyone will pay high at first, he thought. But the price will come down. No matter. He’d charge high prices to have his smiths teach the skills to begin with, and meanwhile sell widely.

  And then��� who knew what he’d do then?

  The turkey was a skeleton, and the mashed potatoes, peas, squash, and carrots mostly memories-cherished memories, because vegetables were a strictly rationed luxury this winter, doled out in grudging lots to hold off scurvy. The pumpkin pie tasted a little odd with honey as the sweetener, but lacked nothing but whipped cream otherwise-milk was still worth its weight in gold, almost literally. Sandy Rapczewicz looked down at her plate for a second. ‘Then she looked out of the corners of her eyes at Coleman, who nodded; Alston could see her gathering herself for an announcement.

  “Think I didn’t know?” she said, forestalling it.

  “Yeah, well,” she said. “We were��� well, sort of waiting, you know, Skipper?”

  Waiting to be sure we were here for good, Alston thought. Rapczewicz had been married, back up in the twentieth. But the Event was as final a method of divorce as death, and considerably more so than a decree nisi.

  “Congratulations,” Alston said aloud, glancing from her to Dr. Coleman. A bit May-September, but I’m not in a position to talk. “Just one thing, Sandy. Get married by all means, but if you get pregnant before this spring’s operations, I’ll perform an operation on you. A hysterectomy, with a blunt butterknife. I’m goin’ to need my XO.”

  “Sure, Skipper,” Rapczewicz said, grinning in relief. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  The guests joined in carrying the dishes back into the kitchen, then trooped back into the front parlor with drinks, and plates of dried-cranberrry muffins and cookies. Alston looked at them a little wryly. Lost in time, and we still play bridge and have Christmas dinner parties. It was such a workaday crowd, among the period-piece splendors of the mansion. One of the better things about the Event was that it had amputated the social pyramid at both ends, though. No masses of poor, and by definition nobody on the island could be rich these days.

  They exchanged the gifts piled under a miniature tree, then Coleman sat down at the piano and began tinkling something vaguely Straussian from the book of sheet music someone had given him. Swindapa pulled her up by the hand and did a creditable waltz. Where the hell did she learn that? Alston wondered. They’d never danced together before; she felt rusty by comparison. Damn, this is nice. She really is graceful as a deer. Sweet-smelling, supple, strong, looking at her with that guileless smile she knew full well covered an unselfconscious, inventive randiness. Damn, and here I thought I was the cold, self-contained type���

  Several of the other couples rose to dance as well. “Can I cut in?” Cofflin asked after a moment.

  “Sure, but with who?” Alston said, smiling secretly to see him blush. “And who leads?”

  “You were really warning Sandy, weren’t you?” he said quietly as they danced off. His style was basic-competent. “I don’t think fighting’s an ‘unlikely contingency we should be prepared for’ with this British expedition, is it?”

  “Hell, no.” They swayed aside to avoid a table. “Should have cleared the room for this��� Unlikely? No, not with Walker over there. If he’s cleared out of Britain, that’s one thing. If he hasn’t���”

  “You get to kick some Iraiina butt?” Cofflin said gently.

  “I confess, wouldn’t be the least pleasin’ thing in the world.” Her eyes touched Swindapa, where she led Ian Arnstein through the steps. “Think, though, Jared. King William Walker, wherever he is, is a deadly threat to us. We’re not talkin’ about a Lisketter here. He knows too much. The knowledge will make the locals dangerous to us, and if Walker gets enough power, he’ll be dangerous to us-as the only potential limit to his power, he has to strike at us. It’s the way he’ll think, believe me.”

  “I do believe you,” Cofflin sighed. “Worse luck. Ayup, I’ll back anything within reason at the Meeting.” His face hardened. “God damn Walker.”

  “May God damn him indeed. But I’ll do my best to help.”

  “Friends come!” Walker shouted at the top of his lungs. “Friends come! Friends come!”

  That was Iraiina law; if you didn’t call out three times when you approached a steading, you were assumed to be hostile. In this case it was purely formal; Daurthunnicar’s scouts had seen him some time ago. Several of them were mounted, with simple pad saddles and stirrups. Bastard trumpeted a challenge at their mounts, and he reined him in sharply; the quarterhorse swiveled its ears back, but he’d taught it to know better than to buck. Walker would still be very glad when there were a couple of his get old enough to break to the saddle-mares would do, a gelding by preference, of course. Riding an uncut stallion was taking machismo to absurd lengths.

  He threw back the hood of his cloak. It was a typical English winter day of the better variety: fleeting patches of sun, interspersed with gray overcast and occasional chill drizzle. He’d almost prefer a hard freeze and some snow, but that didn’t happen often in southern Hampshire. It was amazing how cold the Nantucket-made armor and underpadding were, when you thought of how uncomfortably hot they could be in warm weather. He’d be glad to change over to the set of fancy duds in the leather trunk the packhorse was carrying. The fields were a sodden sort of green, patched with brown and occasional puddles. Mud sucked at the horses’ hooves, coating their lower legs and spattering the trousers of their riders. The smell was rich and earthy, mixed with damp wool from their cloaks. Those were woven from raw fiber, unfulled, with the grease still in it; he was surprised at how well they shed water, almost as good as a rubber slicker.

  There were other changes around Daurthunnicar’s ruathaurikaz, besides stirrups and horseshoes. It had gotten bigger, and one of the new buildings was made of horizontal logs. A couple of wheelbarrows were leaned up against the walls of buildings; it was amazing how much difference those made. Beside the bronze-casting work
shop was a small ironworking smithy, and instead of all the women grinding grain by hand, two male slaves walked around a rotary quern pushing at a beam, linked to it by chains from their iron collars.

  The heads nailed above the hall doorway were very much in the local tradition, though. None of them had had time to weather down to skulls.

  Cuddy nodded to the gristmill. “Great what you can find in books, isn’t it, boss?”

  Walker grinned. “Actually, I got that one out of a movie, Bill,” he said.

  He’d suggested they use horses here on the mill when he built it for them; that would be quite practical with the new harness he’d introduced. Everyone had looked at him as if he’d recommended eating their own children. Odd people, the Iraiina.

  “You know, if we did stay here, we could be running the place in about five years,” he said to Bill Cuddy. “Running the whole of England.”

  The former machinist grunted and looked around at the trampled mud, pigs rooting for slops, a blue-fingered girl in a tattered shift milking a scrubby little cow into a bucket carved out of a section of log.

  “This?” he said. “Run this, boss?”

  “Well, Walkerburg’s already a lot better. Not as much already built as in Greece, yeah, but less opposition, too.”

  “You thinking of changing the plan, boss?”

  “Just a notion. The climate here sucks dead dog farts, I give you that. I’ll think about it.”

  They swung down out of the saddle, armor clanking. He’d kept the conversation with Cuddy quiet; Ohotolarix was picking up English fast, and there were things he preferred to keep private. Retainers came up to take their beasts, and two unsaddled Bastard and led him gingerly off to the round corral where the hobbled mare waited. By the time they got there they were being dragged by the horse, rather than vice versa. His enraged squeal cut through the air.

  There were a lot of horses in the other pens, and four extra chariots stood in a wicker-walled shed. Well, well, he thought, drinking off the ceremonial horn of beer that marked you as a guest. Another tribe, ready to talk alliance with the Iraiina. Our efforts are bearing fruit. And some Tartessians were there, lounging about the entrance, trading warmth for fresh air.